The First Pot Stock Billionaire Says His Penny Stock Could Be A Little High   
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   You have probably never heard of Bart Mackay, a 57-year-old Las Vegas lawyer   
   who works on various ventures like Dot Vegas, which operates the .Vegas   
   top-level domain. But on paper, Mackay is the first pot stock billionaire.   
   Mackay's holdings in CannaVest, which bills itself as the world's leading   
   hemp-based investment company, are valued at $1.8 billion. That figure might   
   seem like a drug-induced hallucination, but it's technically true. CannaVest   
   is the top-performing    
   stock in America in 2014 with a market capitalization greater than $1 billion.   
   Its thinly-traded shares, which change hands on the Over-The-Counter Bulletin   
   Board, have soared by 680% in the last year. They are already up more than   
   300% in 2014. The    
   average daily volume of about 10,900 shares has been light this year, but   
   someone is buying the stock and the $117 it closed at on Friday makes Mackay   
   the world's first pot stock billionaire thanks to his 15.7 million shares in   
   CannaVest.   
   Mackay, however, doesn't think he is actually a billionaire. He says he has   
   never sold a share of CannaVest and even if he wanted to sell some stock he   
   couldn't unload much before crashing the stock. "In my view, it's a paper   
   valuation and certainly not    
   something I can take to the bank," Mackay said in an interview. "I went   
   through the dot.com period and there was a bubble that existed there, there is   
   probably a bubble in this stock somewhere, or in this industry."   
   Mackay believes that CannaVest's stock rise is partially a result of the   
   company being categorized by speculators as a marijuana stock, an idea he says   
   that is not even true because CannaVest is focused only on hemp-based   
   products. With Colorado and    
   Washington implementing laws that allow the sale and use of marijuana for   
   recreational purposes, some stock promoters have been pushing marijuana and   
   hemp stocks big time in recent months. "The company doesn't have anything to   
   do with pot," says Mackay. "   
   The public views it as a pot stock, but for me it's a completely different   
   play."   
   The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority warned investors back in August   
   about marijuana stock scams, saying "the con artists behind marijuana stock   
   scams may try to entice investors with optimistic and potentially false and   
   misleading information    
   that in turn creates unwarranted demand for shares of small, thinly traded   
   companies that often have little or no history of financial success." It's not   
   hard to figure out that some of the people behind the penny pot stock boom   
   have questionable    
   backgrounds.   
   Take Raymond Dabney. In 2005, the British Columbia Securities Commission up in   
   Canada slapped a five-year trading ban on Dabney and barred him from being an   
   officer or director of a publicly-traded company for five years after Dabney   
   admitted to issuing    
   22 bogus news releases that contained misrepresentations about the revenue of   
   Xraymedia, a Minnesota company in which Dabney was a controlling shareholder.   
   The Securities & Exchange Commission also sued Dabney and in 2010 obtained a   
   final judgment    
   against him that included a disgorgement and penalty of about $190,000. The   
   SEC launched the enforcement action against Dabney and three others in   
   connection with a scheme to manipulate the price and trading volume of   
   Alliance Transcription Services.    
   Today, Dabney works as a management consultant for Cannabis Science, a   
   cannabis formulation-based drug development company that trades on the OTCBB.   
   Dabney is described in SEC filings as the trustee of the Bogat Family Trust,   
   which owned 6.5% of Cannabis    
   Science last year.   
   Bruce Perlowin, CEO of another Las Vegas-based OTCBB stock called Hemp Inc.,   
   is completely open about the nine years he spent in prison for drug smuggling,   
   which he describes on his own web site. "This is a dot.com explosion except   
   there is a real    
   product behind us, not air," Perlowin recently said in an interview he scored   
   on Bloomberg Television. The Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation last   
   fall exposed the background of Vincent Mehdizadeh, the founder of a marijuana   
   stock called Medbox,    
   which included arrests or no contest pleas for things like trespassing and   
   credit card fraud.   
   A year ago, an anonymous poster on Seeking Alpha exposed that Michael Llamas,   
   the former president of publicly-traded Medical Marijuana, had been indicted   
   by federal prosecutors in California for his alleged involvement in a mortgage   
   fraud that caused $   
   10 million in losses. Llamas has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and   
   Medical Marijuana separately disclosed last year that it was being   
   investigated by the SEC.   
   So there are some shady characters behind the penny pot stock boom. Mackay,   
   who says he has in the past represented other companies with OTCBB stock   
   listings, says CannaVest CEO Michael Mona, Jr., partially brought him aboard   
   to help navigate the OTCBB    
   underbelly. "I am familiar with a lot of the garbage that goes on with over   
   the counter stocks, the pitfalls, and I guess that is one of the reasons why I   
   decided to help Mike and help this process to avoid some of the pitfalls,"   
   Mackay said.   
      
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